To celebrate the beginning of August, the Vail Valley Art Guild will host a free First Friday reception on Friday, Aug. 3, at the former Avon Police Station. Local artists will display paintings, photographs, ceramics and sculptures. Two Guild members will be the featured artists of the evening, Ursula Gilgulin and Christine Sena.

Ursula Gilgulin

Gilgulin has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She has completed additional studies in art at Brooklyn College Graduate Fine Arts, the Aspen School of Contemporary Art and the Art Students League in New York.

Gilgulin has worked as an art educator in public and higher education, as well as a city planner for New York City. She has been teaching art classes in studio subjects, art history and art appreciation at Colorado Mountain College since 1973. Her work is represented by Harper Rose Studios in Leadville, and her paintings and drawings are in many collections.

Additionally, Ursula has worked as a flight instructor, Federal Aviation Administration designated pilot examiner and FAA safety team representative. She has logged more than 12,000 flight hours, mostly in high density altitude mountain flying, and has twice been presented the Safety of Flight Award by the FAA.

Christine Sena

Sena’s interest in art began as a child when she took art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has also taken art classes and workshops at the Rockport, Massachusetts, Art Association; the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia; William Patterson University in New Jersey; Monhegan Island, Maine; Anderson Ranch in Aspen and Colorado Mountain College in Edwards.

Sena’s work is part of the permanent collection of Colorado Mountain College. Her formal education is in landscape architecture, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a graduate degree from Virginia Tech.

Sena has also worked as a city planner in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a landscape architect for the California Region of the U.S. Forest Service, various environmental positions throughout the United States and finished her career concentrating on security issues with the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C.

The graduates of Vail Mountain School’s class of 2019 will be off to far-flung destinations next fall, set to enter college in one of 16 different states or explore the world on a gap year. One grad is even attending college in Canada.